I loved Georgie - he was a super talent, as was McIntosh also from the west who sadly only lasted a few seasons before a knee injury got him. We would sit with my sister in the stands where Dad had reserved seats, just in front of the press box.
Through the 80’s I graduated to the outer and somehow found myself as regular fixture in the Animal Enclosure for most of the decade, watching Cuz, Barks, Joffa, Burnsie, Jack Daniels, Dupa and my old school mates Kellett & Thommo do battle. There were always cold pies and warm cans of VB for sustenance on those bleak winter afternoons.
For my 50th birthday this year my wife gave me the Animal Enclosure memorabilia - “barbed wire in a box” as she called it. Could not have asked for a better gift (well except if Milney gathered that loose ball in GF1 this year…..!)
And of course there was big Plugger who always made the day special even when we were belted by 10 goals.
Then a raw young kid named Harvey fronted up. All of a sudden we thought we might one day get off the bottom of the ladder. I remember about half way through the ’89 season when we were playing Essendon at Moorabbin. Banger playing about his 10th game and the old man telling me to keep an eye on this kid, he’ll be a star and win a Brownlow one day. The only bit he got wrong was that he won 2 of them.
Towards the end of the 80’s a Kiwi bloke and his young family moved in next door to us in Mentone, and I talked him into coming along to the Animal Enclosure for a few games - he was hooked! A year or so later we took his 5 year old son along, and perched him down on the wooden bench seat at the front of the Enclosure, sitting next to Jack Barker as a matter of fact. At ¼ time the young lad came up to us and asked quite innocently - “Dad, if this is the Animal Enclosure, where are the Animals?”. I leant down to him at said, “Son, you’re looking at them!”. I don’t think he understood but we certainly did.
The last game against Fitzroy in 1992 was a sad day, as was the day at Moorabbin after the 1997 GF with my dad. Now living in Sydney, the last club function I am likely to attend at Moorabbin will have been the Sunday after the GF replay this year with my own 16 year old son.
The day they pack up and head down to Seaford will also be a sad day, but like when they left the Junction Oval to come to Moorabbin in ’65, maybe the next year or 2 will bring us that bloody flag!
